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Mullagatawny Soup

A hearty soup of beef, barley, and fowl flavored with onions, garlic, parsley, marjoram, curry powder, lemon, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Mullagatawny Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a stew‑pan over low heat.

  2. Add the onions, garlic, parsley, and marjoram; stew until light brown.

  3. Add the beef and stew until the gravy is extracted.

  4. Pour in the boiling water and add the barley; simmer for 4 hours.

  5. Mix the curry powder with cold water and add to the stock.

  6. Remove the beef and rub the barley through a sieve to thicken the soup.

Add the fowl and serve

  1. In another pan, stew the fowl with butter until tender, keeping it covered.

  2. Add the fowl to the soup along with the boiling milk and lemon juice.

  3. Serve with boiled rice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Garlic + marjoramtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor as the onions cook and brown.
Onions
Sweetness and savory depth as they brown slowly in the fat.
Lean beef
Releases gravy and flavor into the stock during long simmering.
Scotch barley
Thickens the soup when rubbed through a sieve, giving body.
Curry powder
Provides the spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the sharpness of the spices.

The step that matters

Rubbing the barley through a sieve. Barley starch is what thickens the soup, so the cooked barley must be pressed through fully. Leaving it whole gives a thin broth with grainy pieces rather than a smooth, body-rich texture.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, garlic, parsley, marjoram, beef, barley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, garlic, parsley, marjoram, beef, barley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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